Amrit
by Cruelest Sea
Summary: Genies never dream. They don't have to. Set in episode one, before Cyrus's capture.


**_Amrit_**

_"When someone loves you, the way they say your name is different. You just know that your name is safe in their mouth."-unknown_

Genies never dream.

They're not mortal, or even human, no matter how much they might look it, and while dreams may not be confined strictly to people, they seem to exist only in flesh and blood and never magic. Genies aren't even supposed to exist, at least not outside fairy tales and myths.

Cyrus knows far too many fairy tales. There's only so much that can pass the time within a bottle, between masters and wishes, and he's had lifetimes to read, to absorb the culture and lore of countries and worlds from all the ends of the earth. In the clichéd stories, the ones children love and adults scoff at, the handsome prince falls in love with the girl - but he isn't a prince, not at all - and sometimes - _often_ - they live happily ever after. Always. Never months together followed by years apart, never to be separated again. For humans, it's dreaming, wishful thinking. For a genie, it's more. He's granted wishes for centuries now, after all, some selfish and others selfless, but they're complicated, twisted things, and most of the time it would be better for them to grind them under their heels into crimson powder or hurl them into the sea rather than use them. He warns them, all except the cruelest of masters, but no one ever listens. Temptation is too great in the end, and there's too much a human longs for.

Genies don't make wishes. Ever. They grant them, but they can never keep one for themselves, no matter how much they want it. In the end, even to the kindest of masters, genies are merely property, a possession fought for and obsessively hoarded only to be tossed away when it's served it's purpose. He learns their names, all of them, even if they rarely introduce themselves, and always, only at the first and only once, he says his name, too, some lingering formality, or wistful trace of humanity clinging to a form that's far from human. It's doesn't matter, whatever the reason. He's always "genie", and nothing else, an object shaken out of a bottle and commanded before being quickly sent back in before someone sees and tries to steal him.

Alice is the first to give him her name, to speak his, and he's forgotten the sound of his name except in his own voice, never known what it's like to speak a name in return, not _mistress_ or _master_ but a _name_. They found each other somehow, impossibly, across times and worlds and against imponderable odds, and she gives him life like air in the lungs of a drowning man, moments enough to let him pretend - almost - that he's free, that he's as human as she is. Perhaps its a starving for love that brings them closer, an ache to give what's been bottled up for so long. In a way they're both genies, he in body, and she in spirit, with hearts wrapped in silver, burning on the edges but still straining to break free.

He won't have her forever, he knows. Humans are flesh and blood and fragile bones that form a cage around a heart limited to only so many beats, and he's watched so many of them turn to dust already. She won't live forever, and she's the fortunate one because he'll never leave her. But for this lifetime - a single one out of so many he's lost count - she's his, every kiss, every taste of his name in her mouth, every moment with her fingers threaded through his, stepping through the loneliness and coaxing him to life like the faltering beats of a previously stilled heart.

In all the years he's spent alone in his bottle, in all the places he's seen, and the people he's belonged to, he's never felt free, never longed to belong to someone forever, never loved this way. Every day becomes like the pages of a fairytale, moments pressed between bindings, every touch, every smile painstakingly preserved to last forever.

Genies don't dream. They don't have to. Humans, it seems, dream to remember. And genies never forget.


End file.
